The wait in primary care shoots up: 5 days on average in Spain and 12 in Catalonia

Although the Madrid president, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, has minimized the collapse in Primary Care and blamed the waiting lists on the lack of diligence of some professionals, the objective data about the situation in the health centers demonstrate the generalized perception, among specialists and the public, that the pressure of care in this care field wave after wave increases it’s true.

A survey held on December 20 and 21 by the Society of Family and Community Medicine (SemFYC), among 1,382 doctors, reflects that, on average, a physician in this specialty cares for more than 48 patients per day (55% in person), while during the first round of the covid the range was between 34 and 37 patients a day. At that time, many people were afraid to go to hospitals and health centers, but the fear was disappearing and even so, in the following waves, the current influx was not reached (except for specific cases). For example, in the fifth wave, that of June, the average was 43 patients per day.

And even though the doctors they lengthen their days to try to take care of the maximum and cover the losses of their colleagues, either because of the holidays, or because they are infected, the direct consequence of the boom of infected that is causing the Omicron variant is that health centers do not give enough. The wait average to be attended is from 5.75 days, but in Catalonia reaches 12.38 days.

Behind are Valencia, with 9.33 days; Balearic Islands, with 8.86 days; Andalusia, with 7.67; Murcia, with 7; and Madrid, with 6.83, as the communities with an average of more than one week. Only in Asturias and Castilla y León the time is less than three days.

Number of positives

These figures are due to the new thrust of the virus, which is also evidenced in the number of positives for each health center and day. The average is 23.42 in the whole country but again there are differences between autonomies. Catalonia leads the ranking with 56.75 daily positives in each CAP, followed by Castilla y León (33.6), Madrid (28.6) and Andalusia (28.17).

David Arribas, Deputy Secretary of Metges de Catalunya and doctor at the CAP Manso in Barcelona, ​​attributes the longest waiting lists in Catalonia to “excessive bleeding” from human Resources that suffered Primary Care in the 2010 crisis and that “has not yet recovered.” And the higher positivity may be due to the fact that more tests are carried out and that the Omicron arrived before other regions.

Emergencies

The collapse is such that, usually, who has a urgency That cannot be resolved at this level, such as otitis, which requires antibiotics, goes to hospitals, like many of those who have symptoms compatible with covid and in primary school do not achieve a diagnosis. The emergency services have already sounded the alarm that the healthcare pressure, also in their case, is greater than in previous waves.

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And, despite this, the data from the Ministry of Health only reflects the number of admitted to the plant and the ucis, which fortunately now, thanks to the vaccination, is not so dramatic. For this reason, the SemFYC requires the Government to make public the statistics of activity in Primary Care (as Catalonia already does), to make the situation visible. “The feeling of many family doctors is that the invisibility of their work undermines the confidence of the public and opens the doors to question the healthcare activity”, warns the president of SemFYC, Salvador Tranche.

Another negative consequence of saturation is the delay in diagnoses. “We had already shown that a Primary Care aimed at the coronavirus translates into loss of diagnoses in more than 50% of chronic pathologies and up to 40% in cancer,” underlines Tranche, who therefore requires health managers to “stop to look the other way and assign the Sufficient resources“and necessary to end the collapse.